WhatsApp and nine 

other ideas that were

snubbed before making

it big

From The Beatles to Harry Potter, Inspector Morse and Elvis, there are numerous brainwaves that first fell on deaf ears

EPA/Camera Press

Rich man: Jan Koum, founder of messaging service WhatsApp

WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton became overnight billionaires courtesy of Facebook when the social network giant bought their app.

But Facebook bosses should be kicking themselves after turning Acton down for a job in 2009.

At the time he took to Twitter saying: "Facebook turned me down.. looking forward to the next adventure."

And what an adventure followed - his next venture was WhatsApp, which shook up the world of messaging, turning users away from text messages and Facebook.

The service now has 450 million users and adds approximately a million new users a day.

MONTH'S worth of rain

set to fall in one hour 

tomorrow - but then 

Spring's on its way

The Met office has issued a yellow weather warning for parts of north west England, south west Scotland and north west Wales

Here we go again: A man wades through the water

Almost a month of rain is expected to fall on parts of the UK in just a few hours tomorrow - and the downpour will be followed by 70mph winds.

But the good news is spring is on the way with the promise of much more settled weather.

Cumbria, north west Wales and southern Scotland were due to get the worst of the downpour, with up to three inches drenching the regions.

Most of the rain was expected to fall over high ground, with towns and villages escaping the deluge.

The wet and windy conditions are expected to continue in the coming days.

Met Office forecaster Charles Powell said: “We do have a yellow warning in place for much of south west Scotland, north west England including Cumbria and into the north west of Wales.

“It is mainly going to effect the hills and mountains in those areas.

“There is a potential for as much as 80mm (3in) across parts of the Cumbrian fells.”

The average rainfall for Cumbria in February is usually up to four inches.

“In the south there will be not an awful lot of rainfall, it will be mostly dry and mild” he said.

Children as young as 

12 'failed by Government' 

as they are left on adult 

psychiatric wards

Official NHS rules say kids with mental disorders should never be admitted to adult wards and the Department of Health had promised this would stop by 2010

Mirrorpix

Left: Hundreds of under-18s are admitted

Britian's top psychiatrist has accused the Government of failing mentally unwell children by forcing them to be treated on adult wards.

Official NHS rules say kids with mental disorders should never be admitted to adult wards.

The Department of Health had promised this would stop by 2010.

Yet alarming new figures show hundreds of under-18s – some as young as 12 – with mental health problems are being treated on adult psychiatric wards.

Dame Professor Sue Bailey, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “We are at a tipping-point in mental health.

“It is completely unacceptable that children are having to be treated on adult psychiatric wards.

Vitamin E pills increase 

risk of prostate 

cancer - despite once 

being thought to GUARD against disease

The chance is said to increase by 17% overall - even though the vitamin is widely used to boost the immune system and selenium is taken to ward off heart disease

Getty

Danger: Supplements raise cancer risk

Men have been warned to stop taking vitamin E and selenium supplements after research showed they can dramatically raise the risk of prostate cancer.

Vitamin E – once thought to guard against the disease – was said to actually increase the danger by 17% overall.

And the chance of getting aggressive cancer could rise 111% in some cases. Vitamin E is widely used to boost the immune system and selenium is taken to ward off heart disease.

But US scientists found overdosing on selenium raised the chances of aggressive prostate cancer by 91%. For men lacking in selenium, vitamin E pills increased the overall risk by 63% while the aggressive risk rose by 111%.

The US study was a follow-up of a trial to see if the supplements could prevent prostate cancer.

Two sleeping children 

crushed to death by 

giant boulder which 

destroyed French 

ski chalet

The youngsters, aged seven and 10, were staying near to the resort of Isola 2000 when a landslide occurred around 5am this morning

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AFP

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Sleeping children crushed to death by giant boulder in France

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Two children have been killed after a giant boulder crushed their ski chalet as they slept.

The youngsters were staying near to the resort of Isola 2000, in the French Alps, when the tragedy happened in the early hours of this morning.

A landslide occurred around 5am which sent the boulder crashing onto the chalet, crushing the children, aged seven and 10, to death.

We live in fattest place 

in England - but we're

going to get slim with 

the Mirror

Our three ­Copeland dieters tell their stories - and every six weeks will report back with their ­weight-loss progress in Your Life

Andy Commins/Daily Mirror

Sarah Bell, 21, is 18st 4lb (size 18-20) while mum Janice Bell, 53, is 18st 3lb (size 20-22)

With fishing boats bobbing in the pretty harbour and breathtaking Lake District countryside, Copeland in West Cumbria could be straight out of a postcard.

But the borough has a reputation that you wouldn’t want to write home about.

Last week, Copeland was named and shamed as the fattest place in England with 75.9% of its adults classed as overweight or obese with a Body Mass Index of more than the healthy 25.

Copeland Borough councillor Karl Connor, 32, a rugby union player who stands 6ft 2in and weighs 24st, admits he needs to shed a few pounds himself and has even given up the booze to lose weight

I tested out six different 

online dating profile 

pictures - can you guess 

which one got me a 

date?

he Mirror's Siobhan McNally sees if image really does count as she puts the same personal details with six very different photos of herself - with very different results

Looking for love: Siobhan McNally

This is the busiest time of year for the internet dating industry, as singletons try to find a date in time for Valentine’s Day.

A recent study revealed that the right photo will help you land you the right man so single mum and Your Life columnist Siobhan McNally, 44, decided to test out the look of love..

I based my six “fake” profiles in different locations so I wouldn’t get too much of a crossover on the search criteria, but I used the same personal profile each time, only changing the type of person I was looking for according to my picture.

After two weeks, I then signed back into my six usernames to see how many men had viewed each one and, more importantly, messaged me.

To give me even more feedback, I then asked professional dating coaches Jo Hemmings and Peter Spalton to look at my profiles and explain which ones would be the most successful and why.

Britain has the busiest,

most congested roads 

in Europe according 

to new research

Advertorial feature: We have 77 vehicles per kilometre of road in Britain, that's 76% more than the European average

PA

Commuters in heavy traffic in north east London

Britain has the busiest, most congested roads in Europe.

Anyone who’s driven a car in the last few years probably won’t be surprised to learn that

According to research from the World Bank, there are 77 vehicles per kilometre of road in Britain – 76% more than the European average. That’s two and a half times more than Norway, which boasts the quietest roads at just 29 vehicles per km.

But despite this national snarl-up – or maybe because of it – UK roads are among the safest in the world.  Among EU nations, only Malta has a lower number of deaths per million population.

In 2012, there were 28 people killed on UK roads per million population. Norway, with its deserted roads and sensible people, suffered a total of 148 deaths, or 30 per million.

The figures show that the USA’s famous love affair with the car is more of a fatal attraction. American road accidents caused 33, 780 deaths in 2012, or 108 per million. That’s more than 3 times the UK rate, and one of the highest road fatality rates in the developed world.

Despite massive increases in traffic over the last few decades, the number of people killed on our roads has been falling steadily. From around 7,700 deaths in 1972, and 5,500 in the mid 1980s, there were just 1,754 in 2012.

Young mum was told to

abort her baby but 

battled on and kept a 

diary

Rachel Collins was told baby only had 10% chance of survival and she should abort. She kept a diary of her pregnancy and now little Alfie is happy and healthy she can't wait for him to read it

Caters

Happy days: Rachel Collins and Alfie

Every day mum-to-be Rachel Collins would make sure she took time to sit down and pour her feelings into her diary.

Started when she first discovered she was pregnant, it was to be a journal of her entire nine months preparing for the arrival of the baby she was so desperate for.

The 30-year-old and her partner, warehouse worker Tyler O’Driscoll, had been trying for a child for years. Months earlier they had suffered the agony of an ectopic pregnancy – when the embryo implants outside the womb.

Are you a secret caffeine

 addict? The health

 dangers off drinking too

 much tea and coffee

As a report claims we’re in the grip of caffeine use disorder, Caroline Jones looks at the worrying side effects of our coffee hits

Getty

Bean there, done that: But too much caffeine is bad for you

There’s no doubt caffeine has become our favourite legal high. Millions of us each morning make a trip to buy a latte on our way to work.

We spend £6.3billion a year on takeaway coffee and 80% of people around the globe drink the stuff daily. That is before we throw caffeine-packed tea, chocolate, cola and energy drinks into the mix.

No wonder a new report is claiming that many of us are heavily addicted to caffeine without realising.

Pictured: Ukraine opposition leader Yulia

Tymoshenko emotional 

reunion with daughter 

after release from prison

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Eugenia Tymoshenko, daughter of opposition leader Yulia, says she hopes her mother's release from prison will usher in a new era of democracy for Ukraine

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Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko's daughter reacts to mum's release from prison

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Photographers captured the emotional moment Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was reunited with her daughter after being released from prison.

Daughter Eugenia wept tears of joy as she saw her mother for the first time after her two-and-a-half year prison term.

After being released from jail in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, Tymoshenko was immediately flown to Kiev to make a speech in front of thousands of supporters in the city's Independence Square.

Yulia Tymoshenko, one of president Viktor Yanukovych's fiercest rivals, was jailed over a controversial deal with Russian energy company Gazprom, in which a court decided she had abused the powers of her office.